Venezuela is in disarray and Adelaida Falcón’s mother has died. They’d been inseparable, and after returning from the funeral (attended by a mere six people) Adelaida hides out in the apartment they shared to grieve and ignore the cruelty in the city outside, enjoying “a second gestation, nourished only by my mother, whose presence I could still feel around me.” In Sainz Borgo’s novel, Adelaida’s attempt to navigate the crumbling stability in Caracas (full of food shortages and deadly clashes between rival political groups) is interspersed with scenes from her earlier life (a turtle made into soup, a lover killed by rebels). When she’s kicked out of the apartment by a group of women who trash the place, change the locks and set up to distribute black market goods, Adelaida attempts to recover and make her escape from a country that’s “generous in beauty and in violence.”
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